Income development on organic farms
Every year, the Thünen Institute of Farm Economics investigates the income situation of organic farms participating in the German FADN sample. For the economic year 2021/22, the income data of 446 organic test farms were compared with the incomes of 1,862 comparable conventional test farms with similar location conditions and production factors.
The average income of the organic farms considered was about 3,460 euros higher than that of the conventional comparison group: while the organic farms earned 42,607 euros, the income of the conventional comparison farms was only 39,147 euros. In the course of the last two economic years, however, the conventional comparison farms were able to reduce the income gap.
It is striking that there are large differences in success within the organic farms. This is true both with regard to the different farm types and within the farm types studied, i.e. arable farming, dairy cattle, other forage production and mixed farming. Organic arable farms had the highest income.
The importance of organic farming varies from region to region
The importance of organic farming varies considerably from region to region. In 2022, the relative share of land ranged from nearly 21 percent in Saarland, nearly 17 percent in Brandenburg and Hesse to about 6 percent in Lower Saxony. In absolute terms, the focus of organic farming is in southern and north-eastern Germany: in 2022, 415,528 hectares in Bavaria and 203,592 hectares in Baden-Württemberg were farmed organically; in Brandenburg the organic area comes up to 217,410 hectares and in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania to 199,694 hectares. These four federal states account for more than half (nearly 56 percent) of the organically farmed area in Germany (BLE 2023).
Further key figures in the dossier Current trends in the German organic sector
